Bong
Hit
 I am
an unambiguous fan-boy of all things Apple, so I was
understandably gripped with melancholia when I heard
the news that Steve Jobs was stepping down
as head
of his
revolutionary
company. It's no secret that his poor health led
to him taking this measure and I wish him all the best.
Apple is clearly in good hands with CEO Tim Cook but
these recent events make me ponder what the computer
environment
would
look like had there never been an Apple to act as both
burr under Microsoft's saddle and guide-dog to user
friendliness.
How long, for instance, would it have taken MS to have
instituted its windows interface and how long would
DOS have remained the choice of geeks without Apple
leading the charge? Without any
doubt,
MS's
operating system would be much more primitive and less
user-friendly (Hah!) than the one we know today.
Do you like Halo? It was developed for the Mac and bought by MS shortly before
its release.
What would digital
video look like without the development of Apple's
superb Quicktime? (MS actually stole QT code
in the
90s
to make
its own video
properly sync its audio.
The eventual legal settlement over
this case required a huge financial investment in Apple
on MS's part and a promise
to always develop Office Suite for Mac.)
I would also wager that there would now be but one
mainstream browser and it would be IE. It would suck
much worse than
the current
version as there would be no alternative. Keep in
mind that MS routinely locked out third party programs
and once used its corporate might to quash Netscape
Navigator.
It was also pretty clear in the 90s that MS was instituting
proprietary code in its browser that would
work best with web sites built to its standards. It
doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that MS's ultimate
goal was to control every aspect of the internet, but
that's just how MS thought about the 'net back then.
In the
eventual lawsuit
brought by the government MS was judged a monopoly
and had to mend it ways, but the lawsuit would never
have
gone
forward
without
Apple's
David contrasting against the Goliath of MS.
Photoshop was developed for the Mac because the Mac
was designed for programs like Photoshop. And desktop
publishing took off as the Mac incorporated a robust
system that
used modern fonts and a graphic system that worked
well with the newly introduced laser printers.
Has Apple made mistakes? Certainly, but in almost every
case that a new product failed the root cause was affordability.
The Lisa, the 20th Anniversary Mac, the Cube, the Newton,
all were way over-priced for their time. In the case
of the TAM, which retailed for a whopping ten thousand
dollars, the phrase "What the fuck!" comes
to mind. That being said, I own a used Cube and it
will always be the most beautiful home computer ever
made.
Although I'd never own a PC I honestly appreciate MS
because it has encouraged the engineers and designers
at Apple to go that extra mile to show the world what
a modern computer should be really
like. Dog bless 'em for it.
----------
The Cartoon: In case you haven't figured it out the parade of images
I used above illustrate all the things that make me rapturously delighted to
be a Mac user. If they don't
make sense to you then count your lucky stars.
=Lefty=
------------
Republican Job Creation Update
 "We're
going to have a relentless focus on creating jobs." -
John Boehner, February 10, 2011.
The following is #71 in a list of Republican
job creation activities
since they gained control of the House in 2011. None,
sad to
say,
have
yet to result in one, single new job.
(71) 8-26-2011: Hey! It's our old pal Darrell Issa
again, and he's hired a very nice man named Kurt Bardella
to work for him on the Oversight Committee... only
it's
the
same
Kurt Bardella
he
fired
five months
ago for breach
of trust. Guess this leopard found some really
effective spot remover.
------------
Dump Fox News
 And
what manner of lie is Fox News spewing today? Eric
Bolling removes Rick Perry's foot from his mouth
and inserts words. "Treacherous... yeah, that's the
ticket!"
Click here to help Drop
Fox from your cable system.
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